DialAmerica is a marketing

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

 company and one of the first to specialize in telemarketing

Telemarketing

Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call.Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches...

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History

DialAmerica is one of the oldest telemarketing companies still operating today. The company's roots began in 1957. In 1963, operating as Life Circulation Co., the company developed a sales campaign to support local sports teams and not for profit organizations. Time Inc.

Time Inc.

Time Inc. is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Time Warner, the company formed by the 1990 merger of the original Time Inc. and Warner Communications. It publishes 130 magazines, most notably its namesake, Time...

 magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 spun off and sold their telephone subscription unit to Life Circulation Co., in 1976 forming DialAmerica Marketing. Time Inc. had developed a successful model of magazine sales using the telephone

Telephone

The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

. Since 1976, the company has expanded dramatically with services extending to areas including banking (working with Bank of America

Bank of America

Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...

, GE Capital Bank

GE Capital Bank

GE Capital Bank is a brand of GE Money, itself part of the General Electric Company.The brand is used as the name of seven banking divisions and subsidiaries in Austria, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Hungary, Hong Kong, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland...

, etc), Internet services (including America Online and Compuserve

CompuServe

CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...

). DialAmerica also extends services for over 300 magazine publications, calling on behalf of large publishers like Condé Nast

Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...

 for magazines including Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest is a general interest family magazine, published ten times annually. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, its headquarters is now in New York City. It was founded in 1922, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace...

, People

People (magazine)

In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...

and Ladies' Home Journal

Ladies' Home Journal

Ladies' Home Journal is an American magazine which first appeared on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States...

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Influence

Currently the largest privately-owned telemarketing company in the United States, the company employs about 5,000 people and generates around $185 million in annual revenue. Their representatives make 250 million inbound and outbound calls annually.

Charity

DialAmerica has demonstrated strong industry leadership on a variety of fronts. Foremost is the company's Sponsor program which has generated over $200 million for a variety of charities, including MADD

Mothers Against Drunk Driving

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a non-profit organization in the United States that seeks to stop drunk driving, support those affected by drunk driving, prevent underage drinking, and overall push for stricter alcohol policy...

, Special Olympics

Special Olympics

Special Olympics is the world's largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, providing year-round training and competitions to more than 3.1 million athletes in 175 countries....

, and Doernbecher Children's Hospital

Doernbecher Children's Hospital

Doernbecher Children's Hospital is a children's hospital located in Portland, Oregon, and associated with Oregon Health & Science University.The first full-service children's hospital in the Pacific Northwest, Doernbecher provides full-spectrum pediatric care. The hospital opened in 1926 on...

. DialAmerica employees are routinely encouraged to donate money to DialAmerica under the promise of it going to charities in exchange for certain rewards, such as getting to dress more casually on certain days of the week. Additionally, DialAmerica's President, Art Conway, sits on the board of the Direct Marketing Association

Direct Marketing Association

Direct Marketing Associations are national trade organizations that seek to advance all forms of direct marketing.- International Federation of Direct Marketing Associations :...

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Locations

DialAmerica has 22 offices spread throughout the continental U.S. The vast majority of call centers are outbound facilities, contacting consumers for the purpose of conducting phone sales, in many major cites, such as Omaha, Nebraska

Omaha, Nebraska

Omaha is the largest city in the state of Nebraska, United States, and is the county seat of Douglas County. It is located in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about 20 miles north of the mouth of the Platte River...

; San Diego, California

San Diego, California

San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...

; Columbus, Ohio

Columbus, Ohio

Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...

; and Jacksonville, Florida

Jacksonville, Florida

Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...

. DialAmerica also has several inbound facilities which are located in Athens, Georgia

Athens, Georgia

Athens-Clarke County is a consolidated city–county in U.S. state of Georgia, in the northeastern part of the state, comprising the former City of Athens proper and Clarke County. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial growth of the city...

, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

, and Charleston, South Carolina

Charleston, South Carolina

Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...

. Unlike outbound centers, which concentrate on cold calling

Cold calling

Cold calling is the marketing process of approaching prospective customers or clients, typically via telephone, who were not expecting such an interaction...

 consumers over the telephone in order to encourage sales, inbound call centers exist to take calls from consumers. Consumers call with a variety of needs from applying for a credit card, to ordering a wig, and it is the inbound representatives who assist them over the telephone. The inbound facilities also serve as hubs for the company's quality assurance

Quality Assurance

Quality assurance, or QA for short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process...

department.